The Eighteenth Century Gardens

In 1718 William Heathcote purchased the Hursley Park estate for £35,000 from the daughters of Richard Cromwell. In the years following William began the process of turning the aging Tudor mansion into his Country seat. Almost inevitably the fine Queen Anne style Georgian mansion that still forms the core of the existing Hursley Park House has been focus of historian’s interest. However, where the House was conservative in its styling the grounds appear to have been anything but.

The early years of the 18th Century are perhaps one of the most remarkable, but unsung, in English history. This was the time of Isaac Newton and the Royal Academy. It was a time of remarkable innovation in science and thought, established ideas were challenged and the garden was not immune to this new wave of creativity. Continental ideas of gardens as nature controlled , with formal layouts characterised by knot gardens and topiary were challenged by a new wave of English designers like Stephen Switzer whose Iconographia Rustica’ (The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener’s Recreation) published in 1715 looked towards a more naturalistic garden. A garden that embraced nature

“For to speak the Truth of this matter, most of those that have pretended to give Designs in Gardening, have confined their thought too narrowly into a sort of fine set Gardening ... When in truth the loose tresses of a Tree or Plant, that is easily fanned by every gentle Breeze of Air, and the natural though unpolished dress of a beautiful field, Lawn or Meadow ... are much more entertaining than the utmost exactitude of the most finished Parterre, and the curiousest Interlacing of Box Work and Embroidery”.

William appears to have embraced this new movement with his new gardens. As work on the House was progressing the gardens were also undergoing a transformation. Precise details are hard to find but some of the correspondence relating to the work in the gardens does survive in a few sparse comments preserved in the Hampshire Records Office alongside some pictorial sources.

Possibly the most tantalising reference comes from a letter written by John Conduitt of neighbouring Cranbury Park in December 1720. Conduitt’s letter was written on behalf of Stephen Switzer. Switzer, himself a Hampshire man, had been staying at Cranbury and whilst there had

“viewed your [William Heathcote’s] situation at Hursley & is very ambitious of serving you, but as I acquainted him, I presume you will want no body to lay out your gardens since you are so happy as to have the assistance of Sir Thomas Hewett.”

Described as a “gentleman architect” Sir Thomas Hewett appears to have acted as an architectural consultant for many of the English nobility, including William Heathcote’s father in-law, the Earl of Macclesfield. It was probably Sir Thomas who advised William in his design for Hursley House, and it would appear from John Conduitt’s letter, the grounds as well. Whether Sir Thomas did indeed assist William is hard to prove but what can be seen from the two extant pictorial sources could well be described as a garden that was indeed literally breaking out of the constraints of the formal garden. On August 15th 1721 John Draper, who William Heathcote had appointed to oversee the construction of his new house documented the end of the old Tudor gardens,

“we have likewise pulled down a Great part of the Garden walls and are likewise pulling down more...”

One of the earliest extant paintings of Hursley Park was made by George Lambert in 1740 and shows the mansion house from the north-west with a wall extending to both the east and west of the mansion. When combined with an 18th century map of the estate the picture does at first appear to show a formal walled garden.

To the west the wall extended to form the north edge of what was almost certainly the kitchen garden, enclosed on the north, east and south sides. We know that this was planted with fruit trees along it from correspondence with John Laurence of Sarum, who wrote to William Heathcote in November 1721 with guidance on planting the sixty fruit and apple trees he had arranged delivery of and which his brother, who had recently finished working for the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace, would perform on his behalf.

From the east of the walled garden an avenue of Walnut trees which tradition says were planted by Richard Cromwell, extended from the gardens to the Church. This avenue survived until the second world war, when Supermarine’s Drawing Office was erected over much of it. Outside the estate boundary the avenue changed from Walnut to Lime trees as it continued to the Church. These Lime trees survived until the 1957 when, for safety reasons, they were finally cut down.

To the west the wall extended south to the stable buildings but here the wall stopped and it is at this point that the first indications of William Heathcote’s adoption of the new landscape gardening becomes evident. Rather than completely enclosing the gardens the walls were restricted to the kitchen garden and the stable yard. To the south of the house a lawn, flanked with elm trees, trees that survived until the ravages of Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s, created a vista to that stretched uninterrupted to the Isle of Wight.

To create this vista a new technique was employed, the “Ha Ha”. Instead of a wall ditches were cut to prevent the deer or livestock wandering onto the lawn but in such a way that they were invisible when viewed from the lawn. In the deer park the lakes to the south west were cleared and enlarged again improving the estate in accordance rather than in conflict with nature.

Beyond the Ha Ha the Park itself underwent a major revitalisation. Records from William Heathcote’s personal accounts show the lakes to the south west being enlarged and, according to Evelyn Heathcote’s 1899 biography of the Heathcote family, the Park itself had to be repaired and restocked with deer. Today it is hard to imagine that Hursley’s lawn and the view from it was ever innovative, but in the 18th century it was. Perhaps its greatest success is that three hundred years later it does seem so natural and the ideals laid down by those first exponents of the landscape garden are still rightly honoured and admired.